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Maine Characters: A Novel - Softcover

Orenstein, Hannah

 
9780593851555: Maine Characters: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593851552 ISBN 13: 9780593851555
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

A May 2025 LibraryReads Pick

Named Most Anticipated by Today.com, New York Post, Bustle, PureWow, and BookRiot

From beloved author Hannah Orenstein, this love letter to lake life is “the Parent Trap for adults,” the story of two half-sisters who meet for the first time at their father’s cabin in Maine after his unexpected death.

Every summer, Vivian Levy and Lucy Webster spend a month with their father at his lake house — separately. Raised in New York City, Vivian is an ambitious sommelier with a secret that could derail her future. Lucy grew up in a tiny Maine town, where she now teaches high school English while watching her marriage unravel. They’ve never met. While Lucy envied her half-sister from afar, their father kept Vivian in the dark.

When Vivian arrives at the lake to spread his ashes and sell his cabin, she's shocked to find Lucy there, awaiting his return. In an ideal world, they’d help each other through their grief. Instead, forced to spend the summer together, they fight through a storm of suspicion and hostility to untangle the messy truth about their parents’ pasts. While Lucy is desperate to hold onto the house, Vivian is scrambling after a betrayal. After thirty years apart, is it too late for them to be a family?

For fans of Carley Fortune and Elin Hilderbrand, this sister story set on a lush lake brims with the undeniable heart, depth, charm, and humor that have endeared Hannah Orenstein to legions of readers.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Hannah Orenstein is the author of Maine Characters, Meant to Be Mine, Head Over Heels, Love at First Like, and Playing with Matches, as well as the Deputy Editor of Lifestyle and Wellness at Bustle. She splits her time between Brooklyn and Maine.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One

Vivian

The exit off the highway is so sharp, Vivian Levy throws her hand over the urn so it doesn't topple off the passenger seat. She's never liked to drive these dangerous roads, but she had no other choice. She needed to get out of New York City, get out of her head-fast.

She'd unearthed her dad's ancient truck from the garage that morning; it hadn't been used since last summer. Seven hours later, she'd finally made it to Fox Hill, Maine. The town center slips by with blink-and-you'd-miss-it speed. Everything is tucked within two blocks: There's the pub with peeling paint and a packed parking lot, the ramshackle market, Miss Pancakes across from the bank, and the seafood shop that closed down three years ago. The storefront's sign, featuring a faded cartoon lobster, still sits in the darkened window. The busiest intersection doesn't even have a stoplight.

As she takes the tight bend around the lily-splattered pond, the radio crackles between stations. A John Mellencamp song ends and a biblical sermon begins. Vivian punches it off, even though there's been too much grim silence lately. She misses the murmuring hum of the dinner rush, the warbling busker on the West 4th Street subway platform, and even her opera aficionado neighbor in 5F.

The cracked pavement road turns to dirt as she winds through a thicket of trees, rolling past a field, a buckling white fence, an imposing clapboard house with a sign claiming 1797 construction. The steep hill dips and rises like a roller coaster. She (barely) learned to drive here.

When she reaches the clearing at the top, lush scenery splays out in front of her: the cookie-cutter shapes of emerald pines, the long-shuttered little red schoolhouse on the dusty road, and, beyond it all, the sapphire waters of Fox Hill Lake under a bright sky dolloped with clouds. The first glimpse of this technicolor view catches her off guard every summer. New York City's concrete sidewalks, gray skyscrapers, and grime make it easy to forget Maine's vivid colors.

The GPS cuts out, but Vivian doesn't need it anymore: left at the barn, right at the fork. She crawls along at ten miles per hour, watching out for potholes and deer. Their house-her house, she corrects herself-is most of the way down the dead-end street. She's not ready to keep up a place like this. She doesn't know the first thing about winterizing the dock or fixing the boiler when it breaks. The responsibility is too much for one person, especially Vivian.

Turning into the driveway, she sighs at the familiar sight of the three-story honey-colored house. One apple-red shutter hangs askew-something her dad had been meaning to fix. Arriving after a year away is like slipping into a well-worn but not particularly beloved old sweatshirt. This time, though, an unfamiliar Chevy sedan is parked out front. Vivian's pulse ticks up as she notices the house's lights are on. Hank was an only child who inherited this property after his own parents' untimely death; she doesn't have any aunts or uncles who could be poking around the house. Nobody should be here.

It's a humid eighty degrees, but dread turns her blood cold. Steeling herself, she gets out of the car. Her breath is shallow as a stranger pushes through the screen door. The woman squints at her through pale pink-rimmed glasses; then her warm brown eyes widen. She looks about Vivian's age, with a blond ponytail and a furrowed brow. The uninvited, though admittedly not very threatening, guest jogs down the front walk, flip-flops thwapping against the concrete, and stops short in the driveway.

"Hi," she says, wringing her hands.

Vivian's heart beats faster. She removes her oversized sunglasses. "Can I help you?"

The blonde gapes, then finds her voice. "Do you know who I am?"

A haughty response tumbles loose before Vivian can think it through. "No. Should I?"

The woman's posture wilts like a week-old bouquet. "I guess not," she says.

Guilt flashes through Vivian, but she has every right to stay guarded. This woman was in her house, after all.

The stranger takes a deep, shuddering breath and pauses to compose herself. When she looks up again, her jaw is set. "I'm Lucy Webster."

She scans Vivian's face as if she's hoping for a flicker of recognition.

Vivian stiffens. "Okay. And?"

"I . . . I'm just . . ."

As she grasps for an explanation, Vivian's anger surges up like bile. This woman is solid, three-dimensional, alive, close enough that Vivian can watch the pink creep into her cheeks. Unless she's wildly mistaken, Lucy is proof that she wasn't crazy-she was lied to, again and again.

"I'm sorry, this is my property," she snaps. "You need to leave."

"Wait," Lucy says desperately.

But Vivian can't. The shock is simmering under her skin, ready to boil over; she could scream.

"I'm serious. Go."

Sixteen years of secrecy and gaslighting are about to erupt. She needs to be alone when she falls apart.

"No," Lucy says, looking surprised by her own strength.

Vivian glares, incredulous. "No?"

"Please. Listen."

It would take ten seconds to push past Lucy into the house and lock the door behind her, but then Vivian might never have a chance to learn the truth. Lord knows she won't get it from her mother.

She exhales. "What?"

"You're Hank Levy's daughter?"

Vivian crosses her arms. "Yeah."

With a nervous smile, Lucy says, "So am I."

So there it is. With a sharp bark of laughter, Vivian says, "You have to be fucking kidding me."

Lucy's face pinches in something like pity or disappointment. "I'm not."

Vivian is dizzy. It's one thing to have a wild theory about her dad's shady behavior; it's another to have it confirmed. She goes on the offensive.

"Prove it."

Lucy looks around the overgrown yard. "His name is actually Henry. He was born in Newton, Massachusetts, on August 20, 1970. He went to Columbia, he owned a-"

Vivian interrupts, rolling her eyes. "Congratulations on googling him."

She'd imagined this moment would feel victorious, but instead, it's sickening.

"He . . . he's allergic to walnuts! He's played poker with the same group of guys for twenty years, and last time he won, he got a pair of tickets to the Yankees-Sox game. He bought the living room speakers in there with his first bonus check from his first-ever banking job. And-"

No. Vivian doesn't want to hear this. Any of it. She takes aim with her only weapon.

"You don't even know, do you?"

Lucy tilts her head. "What?"

She fires. "I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this," Vivian says, not feeling very sorry at all. "He's dead."

Lucy

Lucy has been submerged in a suffocating kind of despair ever since Memorial Day weekend. Vivian's words yank her up, force her to focus.

"He's dead?"

Vivian crosses her arms. "Gone."

"When did it happen?" Lucy manages.

"Two weeks ago."

Lucy's jaw sags. She should've noticed something was wrong sooner. Hank never returned the voicemail she left on Father's Day, and he didn't answer her texts about his upcoming annual visit, either. Under different circumstances, she would've thought more of her dad's silence. But for the past six weeks, Lucy has barely been able to peel herself out of bed. She's spent her days trudging through the motions of teaching classes and grading final exams, but it all feels wildly wrong, like she's a ragged sea urchin trapped behind aquarium glass. Each night has been a forty-year stretch of insomnia. When school let out at the end of June, she burrowed under the covers in her childhood bedroom at her mom's house and stayed there for a week, avoiding the filtered daylight slipping through the blinds.

She'd been jarred back to reality when she finally...

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Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2025
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593851552
ISBN 13 
9780593851555
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
400
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Dutton
https://www.penguin.com/dutton-childrens-overview/

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